The Marker
by Turrasta
Summary: Halo/Dead Space X-over. The UNSC mining ship Ishimura picks up a mysterious ancient artefact... Rated for violence, gore and frequent coarse language.
1. The Ishimura

Disclaimer: I own neither the Halo series nor Dead Space, if I did I might be able to afford a full tank of fuel. Anyone who wants to sue me is welcome to do so if they want a share in the standard $8 an hour afforded to apprentice mechanics.

**December, 2566**

**UNSC Mining Ship **_**Ishimura**_

**Orbit of Aegis 7**

Michael Swanson had never been so utterly terrified in his entire life, and considering he had been one of the few survivors of the Flood infestation at Voi in the closing days of the Human/Covenant war, that was really saying something.

Sweat rolled down his spine, tickling his skin. The small room in which he had been hiding for the last two days stank of the sickly smell of stale sweat, and in the corner closest to the door rested a small mound of Swanson's faecal matter, soaked in urine. His cheeks felt dry and his lips were salty, the product of the enormous amount of tears he had shed since locking himself in this God forsaken supply room.

He clutched his pistol, a new model M8A .50 calibre pistol with a nickel-plated finish, like it was his only lifeline in the middle of a stormy sea. Crouched as he was in the corner furthest from the only entrance to the room, Swanson blinked perhaps once a minute, not wanting to close his eyes for more than a nanosecond in case _they_ chose that exact moment to come for him.

The _Ishimura _was 1026 metres long, andhad had a crew of just over 2500; as far as Swanson knew, he was the only one left. The screaming had stopped hours after he had escaped a grisly death at the hands of the seemingly unstoppable monsters. The radio transmissions, which he had been listening to on a small wireless communicator, had stopped maybe 18 hours ago, he wasn't really sure. Time had seemed to blur together, days merging with past weeks, minutes stretching on like hours, hours seeming to last just seconds.

Slowly coming to a stand on shaky legs, Swanson moved silently and cautiously around the room, checking to make absolutely certain that the ventilation ducts were still welded shut, with only the barest of gaps left to allow Swanson to continue breathing and to carry some of the stench away.

As he neared the third-of-four ducts, a soft scratching sound reached his ears. Instantly he stilled all movement, his heart thudding violently against his rib cage, breath catching in his throat. He bit his lip hard as the sound echoed through the silent room, louder this time. Tears began to form in his eyes, and a trickle of dark red blood ran down his chin as his teeth pierced his lip.

More scratching, followed by a dull thump, then all was silent once more. Swanson remained perfectly still, not daring to move, blink or even breathe. Sweat began to trickle slowly down his forehead, some of it getting in his eyes and stinging like hell, but still he refused to blink. Still silent. Maybe it had gone away, whatever it was.

Secure in his apparent safety once more, Swanson slowly let out the breath he hadn't been aware he was holding and blinked several times rapidly, expelling the sweat and soothing the pain in his eyes. He drew in another breath, relief finally flooded his system and his lips formed the barest hint of a smile.

_I'll be okay. I'll just sit tight and wait for the rescue to come. I'll be-_

His thoughts were violently cut off as an ear-piercing screech, one that Swanson had heard far too many times these past few days, reverberated through his body as though he were a giant tuning fork, and a loud, ringing thud echoed from the thin Titanium composite door that sheltered him.

The thud was joined by another, and another, and soon dents began appearing in the door. Frightened beyond rational thought now, Swanson screamed like he had never screamed before, and, as a long, wicked-sharp claw punctured the door, he raised the powerful handgun that had kept him alive while all those around him had been dragged down to the floor and slaughtered in gruesome, horrific ways the likes of which he had never imagined.

Another claw punched through, and Swanson caught a glimpse of sickly grey-tan flesh through the holes. With all the incentive he needed to fire, he did so with impunity, the .50 calibre shots ringing loud enough in such close quarters to make Swanson's unprotected eardrums burst and started to bleed after the third round.

Three more holes appeared in the door, and another screech, this time of pain and anger, answered the mans furious firing. Twelve times he pulled the trigger before the hollow clicking sound of a hammer falling on an empty chamber alerted him to the fact that he was now out of ammunition; the magazine he had just emptied into the door had been his last one.

Eyes as wide as saucers, Swanson moved slowly toward the door. Peering out of one of the baby-fist sized holes he had blown in the door, he spied the monster lying on the floor of the corridor outside, its mouth open in a silent scream, thin, fleshy tentacle-like growths protruding from within the things mouth, originating from somewhere behind the razor sharp teeth. The tentacles still twitched slightly, the final death throes of something that had intended to take Michael Swanson to hell.

Relief once more coursed its way through his system. He had survived again, a fact which only helped to reinforce his opinion that he was going to make it. It was such an overwhelming feeling that he actually let out a chuckle. That chuckle turned into a full blown guffaw, and before he knew it, he was on his knees in front of the tattered remains of the door, laughing maniacally and clutching his sides tightly.

He never heard the not-too-distant scratch of super sharp claws on deck plating, never noticed the faint signs of movement from the other side of the door, never saw the monster he had thought he had killed slowly rise up, raising one of its sickle-like forearms. Never saw that forearm come crashing through the door and ramming elbow-deep into his chest.

Even then, he didn't notice, having finally succumbed to madness. Not even as he was slowly pulled through the doorway, his flesh being cut deep as the monster tried to pull his body through the tattered door. Angry that it could not drag the still-laughing man to it, the beast raised its other arm, sending it crashing through the door as well, to pierce the mans head, silencing him almost immediately. Blood, brain matter and flecks of shattered bone exploded violently from the mans head, showering everything with a couple of feet from him in gore.

Michael Swanson had been taken to the hell he had feared so much, and he had never even noticed it.

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

A/N: Due to severe writers block regarding both of my other stories at the moment, I've decided to take a break from them and flesh out another idea I had recently. This is the result of my labours thus far. Please review and let me know what you all think.


	2. The Crew

Disclaimer: Don't own Halo or Dead Space. Do own all original characters and/or technologies.

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**December, 2566**

**UNSC Patrol Cutter **_**Trireme**_

**Investigating UNSC **_**Ishimura**_** Distress Signal, one jump from target**

Staff Sergeant Anthony Cromwell smiled predatorily as he gazed across the table at Petty Officer Samara Yeats. Yeats glared back, staring daggers into the older mans eyes and chomping hard on the end of her cigar.

"Your move, honey," Cromwell's deep, baritone voice grated, echoing dully in the small room.

"Don't call me honey, fuck-face," Yeats said, an edge to her voice that was rarely heard. She reached up and brushed the back of her hand against her brow, wiping away the sweat that had gathered there, then grabbed the cigar and placed it in the ashtray on the table in front of her. "Fine, I'll see your twenty and raise you ten."

Cromwell chuckled as Yeats tossed a poker chip on the table, sipped at the bourbon sitting at his side. He snorted derisively at her and threw down his cards.

"Straight flush, _honey_," Cromwell laughed a low, full bellied guffaw and downed the rest of his bourbon as Yeats looked on in disbelief. Cromwell slapped a massive, meaty paw down onto the pile of chips and started pulling them towards him. He didn't get far.

"Four-of-a-kind, _fuck-face_," Yeats said, slamming her own, much smaller hand down on top of Cromwell's in triumph. Cromwell clacked his teeth together in annoyance and shoved the pile of chips toward the Petty Officer as he stood abruptly, the metal chair clattering sharply to the floor.

"Fuckin' bullshit!" Cromwell ground out, flipping Yeats the bird as the younger woman laughed. "If you weren't a lady, I'd knock you the fuck out and take my money back."

"Lady?" a voice snorted behind him as he turned to the only door to the room to leave. "If she's a lady, I'm the Arbiter."

"Hey, fuck you, Sinj," Yeats muttered to the _Trireme_'s Sangheili liaison. The towering alien warrior warbled out a chuckle, turned his body to the side as the Staff Sergeant stormed past.

"We are preparing to make the final jump to the Aegis system," Sinj Kanam grumbled, before retreating back the way he had come. Yeats stomped out her cigar, gathered her chips and followed him out.

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The _Trireme_ shuddered as it transitioned almost instantaneously from more than sixty times light-speed to just eight thousand kilometres per second, and Lieutenant Isaac Clarke stumbled slightly as the inertia caught up with him. Isaac wasn't very experienced with Slipstream Space travel, having spent his entire life on the planet Dune, a vast desert world 300 light years from Earth.

He had joined the UNSC Engineering Corps at twenty-six, and now, aged twenty-eight, he was on his way to his first real assignment. He glanced across the bay at the four Marines and the single huge alien that would be accompanying him aborad the _Ishimura_.

Isaac was somewhat afraid of the alien, with its digitigrade legs, long, powerful arms and elongated squid-like skull. The rows of sharp carnivores teeth that shone dully in the light of the _Trireme_'s shuttle bay did not help at all.

"So, do we actually know what's wrong with the _Ishimura_?," Lieutenant Jessica "Jessi" Simmons asked as she sidled up beside Isaac. Jessi was the Trireme's other Engineer, two years older than Isaac and with six years more experience, she remained a lieutenant only because of her disregard for authority of any kind.

"No idea, probably just a downed transmitter. Maybe an asteroid got past the mass drivers and took out a dish or something," Isaac answered, eyeing the hardware the Marines were packing. He was far from thrilled that he was going to be armed for this mission, even less so that the Marines looked about ready to take on a battalion of Brutes.

Jessi followed his gaze and frowned as she watched Staff Sergeant Cromwell loading an MA55A Assault Rifle. A hybrid between the MA5B/C assault rifles and the BR55 battle rifle, the MA55A retained the large magazine capacity and high rate of fire of the assault rifles and the mid-range accuracy of the battle rifle, making it a lethal combination and the weapon of choice for modern armed forces.

Although she admired the engineering that went into the design and manufacture of such a weapon, she held great contempt for anything that was designed to cause another living creature harm.

"Nice to see the cowboys are having fun," she muttered, her voice dripping with sarcasm and disapproval. She never saw the frown that crossed Isaac's face at her remark, but she did see him rub his neck as his eyes darted about the shuttle bay, finally coming to rest on the D77-AS Pelican Mark IX dropship that occupied the corvette's sole shuttle bay.

"What's the matter with you?" she asked, concern marring her feminine features. Isaac continued staring straight ahead at the Pelican for a moment, eyes unfocussed, then shook his head and looked at her.

"Nothing. I…I've just got a really bad feeling about this all of a sudden," he said, eyes flicking back to look at the Marines and the alien warrior once more, suddenly glad for the firepower they were carrying and not really sure why.

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The _Trireme_'s sleek form receded behind the Pelican rapidly, and Cromwell coughed quietly behind the faceplate of his combat helmet. He didn't know why it was necessary that he and his Marines carry so much firepower, especially considering that any attempts for pirates or privateers to hijack the _Ishimura _would have met a bloody end at the hands of the 300 Marines that served as the UNSC mining ships' security force, but a terrible feeling of dread hung heavy in the pit of his stomach, and he had the awful feeling that the weapons and ammunition they carried just wasn't going to be enough to ensure the teams safety.

The _Ishimura_ herself hung in low orbit above the barely inhabitable shit-hole that was Aegis 7, the enormous ship rapidly growing to fill the Pelicans frontal canopy. Something about the blocky, yet somehow very sleek, form of the ship set his teeth on edge, and he concentrated so hard on it that the pilots voice nearly made him leap out of his skin in fright.

"UNSC _Ishimura_, this is Pelican _Trireme_-196, requesting landing clearance, how copy, over?," Flight Lieutenant Amanda Connelly spoke slowly, chewing vigorously on a stick of gum. Static was all that greeted the Pelicans cockpit.

"UNSC _Ishimura_, this is Pelican _Trireme_-One-Nine-Six. We are carrying a Marine fire-team and Engineering crew for you, requesting clearance to land. How copy, over?," she spoke louder this time, with an edge to her voice that bespoke of a short temper already reaching its limit.

"Can't raise 'em, Sergeant. I can go over to computer control, let the _Ishimura_'s tractors guide us in."

"Do it," Cromwell said, without a moment's hesitation. If the _Ishimura_'s short ranged communications were down as well as their FTL comms, there could be no chance of coincidence. The ship had either been boarded or sabotaged.

"Send a sit-rep back to the _Trireme_ and tell them to get us some reinforcements out here," he continued, then turned back into the Pelican's troop bay. "Lock'n'load, boys and girls…uh, and aliens. The _Ishi_'s short range comms are down as well, and I'm sure you all know what that means."

Jessi frown, raised her hand. "Ah, I don't."

"If their short ranged comms are down as well, that means something other than just a downed transmitter has happened," Cromwell said, clacking his teeth in annoyance.

"I don't understand," she said, shifting in her seat as everyone turned to look at her.

"Jesus-fucking-Christ! FTL Comms down, that's a stray asteroid or faulty wiring. Short ranged comms as well? That's a hostile boarding party or decompression of the whole ship. Do you fucking get it now, sweetheart?," Cromwell shouted, and the Pelican descended into silence as he stood glaring at the engineer.

"Well?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I get it," Jessi replied, refusing to meet the Sergeants eyes. Isaac shifted uncomfortably in his seat beside Jessi, but said nothing.

"Anything else?," Cromwell asked tersely. No one moved. "Good. Seal your combat suits and power harnesses against vacuum, check your ammo and watch your spacing as we move about, I don't want any friendly fire in there."

There were nods all around, followed by the sounds of various harnesses and suits being sealed. With shocking suddenness, the Pelican jolted hard and listed, sending Cromwell slamming hard against the wall of the troop bay.

"What the fuck is going on?," Petty Officer Yeats shrieked, as she was flung violently against her seat restraints.

"Fucking grav-tether is reeling us in too fast and won't let go!," Connelly shouted back, her voice strained as she fought for control over her bird. "Everyone strap in tight, this is going to get a little rough!"

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A/N: You've read it, you can't unread it...you can review it though.


	3. Contact

_**UNSC **__**Ishimura**_

**Stern Docking Bay**

**Remains of Pelican **_**Trireme**_**-196**

The crackle and pop of a nearby fire burning was the first thing he heard, the acrid smell of burning plastics invading his nostrils. Isaac Clark blinked slowly, his eyes stinging as smoke wafted around his head. The orange glow of the fire was blotted out momentarily by a shape moving past.

"Get up, son, you'll live," Cromwell's voice grated against Isaac's ears, and strong hands gripped him below his armpits and heaved him to his feet. He swayed a little, leaned back until he felt his power harness clink against a steel wall.

"What happened?," Isaac asked, his voice coming out in a hoarse rasp.

"We crashed," Cromwell answered wryly, then turned and started heading out of the Pelican's troop bay. As Isaac began to follow, he noticed for the first time that the dropship was upside-down. Seat restraints hung lazily from above his head, and an open med kit lay at the opening to the troop bay.

"…how's our coms?" Cromwell's voice floated in through the opening as he came to it, and Isaac stuck his head out in time to see the pilot shake her head.

"No good, Sergeant. We lost our transmitter coming down. Only way we're going to be able to talk to the _Trireme_ and get an ETA on our reinforcements is if we take a long walk out a short airlock and sign it to them," Connelly answered, wiping her hands on her pants as she spoke.

"Well, fuck me," Cromwell sighed. "Alright, guess all we can do is find somewhere to sit tight."

"Hey," Jessi Simmons said, stepping up beside Isaac. "We were pretty lucky that no one got hurt."

"Yeah," Isaac said, looking out at the small group of people. Sinj had climbed up onto the low walkway that ran through the shuttle bay and was walking slowly along it deeper into the _Ishimura_.

"Alright, pack your shit and let's-"

Cromwell was cut short as a loud, ominous groan filled the shuttle bay. Everyone was set on edge, weapons held at the ready, but when the next groan came, Isaac realised it had not come from anyone living.

"Oh, shit," he whispered, staring wide-eyed at the dented shuttle bay door. Another groan ripped through the room, and as Isaac watched, the door shifted slightly, and the sound of air hissing away under pressure reached his ears.

"Christ! Everyone, seal your suits and get your arses into gear!," Cromwell shouted, hefting his own small knapsack filled with supplies. "Sinj! Find us a way out of here before that fucking door blows!"

The huge alien warrior bounded off at speed down the long walkway, headed for a set of doors at the far end, deeper into the ship, even as the humans scrambled up the ladder and began to follow him.

"Move it already!," Connelly cried out as she pushed Isaac down the walkway, then broke out into a dead run down the corridor. The sound of booted feet slapping against titanium catwalk filled the bay as another groan echoed off the metallic walls, and air began whistling out into space more quickly.

With a hundred metres of walkway to go, the door groaned again and this time the difference in air pressure was much more noticeable; everyone was now struggling visibly against the outracing air as the moved towards the now open doors and Sinj.

"Hit your magnetics!," Cromwell shouted, and everyone turned on their magnetic boots as the door groaned again and finally gave way. Almost everyone. Amanda Connelly was swept past as the decompression sucked anything not bolted down out into space.

Her screams echoed in Isaac's helmet as she flew out into the void, struggling vainly as she began a never-ending journey through the dark.

"Oh, Jesus," he heard Jessi sob, even as the first people made it through the open doorway, Sinj waving his long arms and counting the people as they past him. Isaac felt a gentle impact against his back as Sinj slapped him there, then closed the doors.

Everyone waited in silence as the airlock re-pressurized, visible streams of air hissing in. Isaac looked around the small room, his eyes settling on one of two doors that lead deeper into the ship; the one marked Entrance Lobby. But he wasn't looking at the markings, so much as the scrawled writing across the door.

"'Cut off their limbs?' What the fuck?," he heard one of the Marines say as he too noticed it. "Cut off whose limbs?"

"Fuck that, man," another Marine spoke. "Who gives a shit what it says, I think it's written in blood."

"Shut your mouths," Cromwell snapped. "We go about this like any other mission. I don't care if someone went nuts with Space Fever and killed everyone, then started writing shit on the walls."

"That seems unlikely, Sergeant," Jessi said. "A ship this size, I doubt just one person could kill everyone aboard."

"They could if they did it the right way: grab a vac-suit, vent the atmosphere, then kill anyone who managed to survive. Whatever is going on here, we find the info we need, wait for the big boys to show up," Cromwell answered. "Sinj, get ready to open that door."

"Everyone else, check your weapons, and be ready for anything. If we run into trouble, it'll be tight quarters all the way through, so check your spacing, don't bunch up and for fuck's sake, don't go around a corner or through a door blindly," he finished.

"What about Connelly?," Petty Officer Yeats asked.

"What about her? She's gone, nothing any of us can do."

Isaac shuffled uneasily as the Marines checked over their assault rifles and sidearms, then reluctantly removed his own pistol and checked it over. Popped the clip, cleared the breach, dry fired into the wall. Satisfied that it was useable, he reloaded and re-holstered it.

"Everyone in the clear?," Cromwell asked, to which he received a round of 'Yessirs'. "Alright, good. Sinj, open the door. Fulton and Barnes, cover."

Sinj moved closer to the door, clutching his plasma rifle in one enormous hand, the other reaching out to the holo-panel in the centre of the door, the two nominated Marines shuffling around to bring their rifles to bear on anything that might be on the other side.

More advanced holographic displays was one of the technologies gifted to humanity from the Sangheili as the aliens vied for redemption from the atrocities they had committed over the course of the UNSC/Covenant War. It had been a gift that humanity was only too eager to accept, much like the new point-defence pulse lasers standard on most new ships and, of course, FTL communications.

Isaac shook the thoughts from his head as the door hummed as it slid apart, the two nominated Marines sweeping the inner lobby with their rifles. The shorter of the two, bearing the name-patch 'Fulton' took a cautious step forward, then halted in the doorway.

"What's the hold-up, private," Cromwell asked, moving up behind the younger man. He peered over Fulton's shoulder, let out a long, low whistle. "Christ, what happened in here?"

The lobby was a mess; a couple of trash cans had been overturned, their contents spread liberally about the room. Along one side of the room was a low wall, with a glass top, the glass featuring any number of cracks spider-webbed across it. The walls, the floor, the glass, even the ceiling was coated in dried up blood, but there were no bodies to be seen.

The small team shuffled out into the lobby, the overheads flickering on as they detected movement beneath them, casting a sickly glow across the room; the lights had taken a few splashes of blood, too.

Isaac's hand fell to his hip holster, and he drew the pistol that rested there, suddenly forgetting his habitual distaste for the necessity of the weapon.

"My God," Jessi said, moving closer to Isaac. Isaac said nothing, his eyes roving over the room slowly looking for some clue as to what might have happened here. He cringed away from Sinj as the massive alien shouldered his way past, before dropping into a crouch near one of the low-set couches in the room.

"This is a bad omen," Sinj growled out, his four-fingered hand caressing the inactive plasma blade at his side.

"Yeah, no shit," Cromwell said, grimacing distastefully at the door on the left side of the room as it refused to budge. The Staff Sergeant turned and eyed the security door that led into the lobby control booth, and the maintenance tunnels that honeycombed this are of the ship beyond the booth.

"Clark, Fulton, go into the control booth and see what you can do about this door, I think it's gone into a security lockdown or something," he said, gesturing to the booth. Isaac nodded and began moving deeper into the room, toward the indicated door, forcing Jessi to relinquish her hold on his arm. He bit back a small smile as she latched onto Sinj instead, causing the Sangheili to grunt his displeasure.

"Hey," Isaac said to the Marine that was accompanying him into the control booth as they moved through the door. "Ever see anything like this before?"

"Me? Hell no!," Fulton replied from behind his helmets combat shield. "This is only my second operation, and the first one was just escort duty for some mangoes."

"Great," Isaac muttered as he approached the small stand of controls in the corner of the long, narrow booth that was closest to the lobby entrance on the other side of the glass. He bent down closer to the control panel, examining it closely.

"Did you hear that?," Fulton's voice interrupted his inspection, and Isaac half-turned to face the young Marine. The other man was looking up at the ceiling, his rifle half-raised, as though waiting for something to jump out at him.

"Hear what?," Isaac asked, his hand slowly inching for his pistol, as he too scanned the ceiling futilely; there was no way he could see through the quarter-inch titanium panelling any more than Fulton could.

"Guess it was nothing," Fulton replied after a moment, but it was clear to Isaac that he wasn't about to let his guard down. Isaac nodded absently to himself, then turned back to the controls. He reached out to tap Y for 'Yes' at the flashing prompt on the small screen that read: CANCEL SECURITY LOCKDOWN?

Just as his hand hovered an inch above it, Cromwell's voice erupted in his ear and he jumped in fright.

"What the fuck is taking so long, Clark?" Isaac grit his teeth; as a Lieutenant, he outranked the Staff Sergeant considerably. Unfortunately, given the nature of this little assignment, even a Marine Corps Private outranked and Engineering Corps Lieutenant, so there was little that Isaac could do about Cromwell treating him like one of his subordinates.

"Just about got it, Sergeant," Isaac answered, then tapped the Y key. Immediately, the locked door on the far side of the lobby hummed and sprung apart.

"Nice work, now get your arses-," Cromwell was cut off as the lights flickered, then died altogether. "Flashlights!"

Light began to cast its warm glow across the room again, but before anyone could even get their bearings, the horrible screech of metal being torn apart by something harder than it resonated through the lobby and the control room. The ceiling of the lobby came alive as a chunk of titanium fell into the room, and a dark shape followed it to the ground.

Tall and spindly, the thing seemed to be all claws and teeth, and one of the Marines cried out as his rifle spat depleted uranium slugs. The thing seemed to take a half-dozen hits to the chest, from what Isaac could see before he was thrown to the ground, Fulton landing beside him, as the reinforced shatterproof glass was perforated as the panicking Marine fired blindly around the room.

With a scream that Isaac was sure he would never be able to forget, the Marine was tossed through the now shattered glass, minus his right arm and trailing arterial gouts of blood as he flew across the booth into the far wall.

"Holy shit!," Isaac heard Fulton shout, then the booth lit up with muzzle flashes as the private fired his weapon. Bullets whizzed by his head as he leaned forward, firing his sidearm with fervour and hitting nothing.

"Fall back, everyone fall back," Cromwell's voice exploded in Isaac's ears, and as he stood he could make out dark figures moving through the doorway he had opened, and the inhumanly tall and thin monsters, pointed, spear-like arms reaching toward them. A flash of light, and one of the monsters was down, screaming and flailing about as it tried to continue its attack minus its lower half.

Sinj's plasma blade flashed again, and another creature fell in two halves, then the warrior was gone and the door snapped shut behind him.

"C'mon! This way!," Fulton shouted, grabbing Isaac's arm and dragging him to the rear end of the booth, toward a door Isaac hadn't noticed before. The last thing Isaac saw before passing through that door was one of those _things _scrambling through the shattered glass after them.

"You alright?," Fulton asked, releasing Isaac to get a better grip on his rifle as they hurried down the new corridor. Isaac nodded dumbly, stumbled as the sound of metal tearing reached his ears from somewhere behind him; they were coming through the door.

"Keep moving," Isaac said, speeding up as Fulton turned around and moved backwards quickly, rifle up and aiming back at the door.

"No shit."

They rounded a corner and Isaac's face lit up behind his helmet as he spied what lay at the end of this service tunnel.

"Service elevator! Our ticket outta here," Isaac smiled back at his Marine companion, just in time to see the first muzzle flashes.

"Here the fuckers come!," Fulton shouted above the din of his own rifle and the cries of pain and rage the creatures emitted with each hit. The nine millimetre DU rounds were designed to deal with energy shields and powered armour, so it was a shock to see the things taking hit after hit without even slowing down.

For Fulton, the tight quarters meant this wasn't anything more than a point-shooting gallery, albeit one in which the targets wouldn't go down. The rifle clicked on empty, and Fulton turned and dashed for Isaac and the elevator, the Engineer covering him the whole way the boom of his sidearm.

"Close it, close it, close it!," Fulton shrieked, diving through the entryway to the elevator as Isaac jabbed the 'Close Door' button. As the doors slowly ground shut, Fulton swung around, his own sidearm up, and fired three times fast into the chest of the freakish ghoul at the front of the pack, two rounds hitting their marks and the other going stray, hitting the thing in the shoulder…and blowing its' arm right off.

Finally, the doors came together with a 'ding', shutting off the nightmarish view of those unstoppable bastards for the two occupants of the elevator. As the service lift began its slow descent, the dulcet jazz tones of Coltrane began playing, and the two men, panting hard with fear and exhaustion, slowly turned to each other and shared a grimace behind their visors.

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A/N: And there you have it, sorry for the long-ass wait, this has actually been ready for posting for a while, just kept on forgetting to actually post it. Review, please.

This IS my first horror fic, so any suggestions or tips for writing this kind of story would be appreciated.


	4. To The Monorail

Finally, the next chapter is here!

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Fulton shook his right hand experimentally, working out the pain in his wrist from the shock of firing his weapon full auto for sustained bursts, then turned to look at the engineer standing beside him in the cramped confines of the service elevator.

"So…, uh, any idea what the fuck that was?," he asked, gesturing vaguely at the doors to the elevator as it slowly made its way deeper into the ship.

"No way, never seen shit like that before," Isaac answered, then stopped to think for a moment. "The Flood, maybe?"

"Nah, I've seen the file footage on the Flood. Those things didn't look anything like combat forms, or anything else the Flood came up with," Fulton said, reaching around behind himself. His hand came back into the dim lighting of the lift clutching what was obviously a weapon of some kind.

"Here," he said, handing it to Isaac. "M9 sub-machine gun, firing the new seven-sixty-two Tungsten-ferrous shredders."

Isaac turned the compact weapon over in his hands. It was reminiscent of the outdated M7 SMG, with a vertical foregrip, collapsible stock and side-mounted magazine feed, but the weapon itself was heavier and carried a thirty round clip of 7.62mm anti-personnel rounds. The rounds themselves were essentially a downsized version of anti-capital ship Magnetic Accelerator rounds, with a Tungsten jacket for limited armour penetration and a ferrous core that splintered inside the target, making it impossible to remove the bullets.

"Thanks, but I've never fired one of these before," Isaac said, starting to hand it back. Fulton pushed it back into his arms.

"Not like its hard. As long as your pointing in the general direction of what you wanna hit, chances are you'll hit it," Fulton explained. "'Sides, if you're gonna be watching my back, I want you packing something more than that sidearm."

"Fair enough," Isaac muttered. He watched as the Marine beside him went about quickly reloading his assault rifle and pistol, then turned his head to face the doors. With a quiet 'ding', the lift came to a halt and the doors slowly spread apart. It was unexpected, and Isaac swung the SMG up to aim out into the short hallway the lift opened up into, just before Fulton raised his rifle.

Somewhere off in the distance, they could hear what sounded like machinery rattling away, doing whatever it was that it was designed for. Aside from that, it all appeared quiet.

"Looks clear," Isaac said, gently chewing his bottom lip behind his faceplate. Fulton nodded slightly, moved out slowly and cautiously into the hallway, sweeping his rifle slowly around, ever watchful for danger. Nearing the end of the hallway, Fulton braced his back up against the wall and peeked his head around the corner. He quickly scanned the room, noting a blood spatter on the floor a short distance away, with a trail of it leading behind a support girder in the poorly lit room.

Without turning back, he waved his hand, signalling Isaac that it was safe to move forward.

"Let's check the place out, see if we can find anything useful," Fulton said, then pushed himself away from the wall and moved deeper into the room. He eyed the blood spatter on the floor warily; up close now, it looked pretty fresh.

"Fuck me," he heard Isaac say softly behind him, and he turned to see what it was. Propped up against the far wall, hidden in shadows, was a badly mangled corpse. Whether it had been a man or a woman, neither Isaac nor Fulton could tell. There were a few small splashes of blood around the body, and grasped in one hand was something that looked like a weapon of some kind.

"Whatever got this poor bastard sure made a mess of him," Fulton said, licking his lips nervously as he looked around the room once more, making sure that there was nothing that could pose a threat hanging around.

Isaac gagged behind his faceplate, fighting the urge to throw up. Inside a vac-sealed suit, vomiting was probably the most unpleasant thing one could do.

"I think we should just keep moving," Fulton said, shuffling back away from the corpse. Isaac shook his head.

"He's got something in his hand," he said, reaching out and gingerly prying the object from the dead man's stiff fingers. He pulled it away, turned and held it up to the light.

"It's a plasma cutter, it could come in handy," Isaac said, examining the tool to make sure it was in working order.

"Whatever, let's just go," Fulton muttered irritably. Isaac pocketed the plasma cutter and shouldered the SMG again, nodding to the Marine that he was ready to leave. The other man turned and headed for the only other door in the room, directly opposite the door to the elevator.

He reached out, tapped the holographic display and the doors sprung open. The pale beam of light from the flashlight mounted on Isaacs SMG caught sickly tan flesh for a split second before another one of those things leapt from the open doorway at Fulton. The Marine shouted, stumbled backwards and fired off a poorly aimed burst of fire, clipping the side of the things body.

Fulton fell flat on his back, the creature standing above him, arcing back, those wicked sharp bone-blades on its arms gleaming dully as they flashed downward in what seemed to be slow-motion for Fulton. He squeezed his eyes tightly shut, hoping for a quick end, when the chatter of the SMG deafened him over the screeching of the monster.

He opened his eyes again and saw blood spray in macabre patterns all over the wall behind the thing as it jerked and danced under the hail of rounds, and just as suddenly as it began, it was over. And it was still standing.

Fulton heard Isaac cursing behind him, heard him fumbling for his sidearm, and knew that Isaac couldn't help him now. But he had bought Fulton some time, time he used to gather his wits and raise his rifle. The confines of the ship were once more filled with the sounds of gunfire, and Fulton swung the assault rifle back and forth twice, cutting the thing in half at the waist and sending it sprawling to the ground with a short-lived screech.

Heartbeat thundering in his ears, Fulton sat upright, weapon still trained on the abomination. He scuttled backwards a few feet, then stood up and backed away until he was standing beside Isaac, still eyeing the creature.

"Here," he said, handing two SMG clips to Isaac. "And thanks, I thought I was gone for sure."

"No problem. Like you said before, I need someone watching my back," Isaac replied, casting a sideways glance at the impassive reflective visor of Fulton's combat suit.

"Alright, let's go," Fulton said, taking three short steps forward. As he neared the thing on the floor, the top half of its suddenly sprang up at him, screeching.

"Holy shit!," he yelled, stumbling back and emptying the remainder of his magazine into it. A bladed forearm flashed past his visor barely an inch away and slammed hard into the reinforced titanium doorframe. The thing shuddered violently for a moment, then seemed to deflate and was perfectly still. Cautiously, Fulton nudged it with his boot.

"Jesus Christ, what does it take to kill these things?," Isaac whispered behind him. Fulton just shook his head, then moved past the creature out into the corridor beyond the doorway. The corridor ended a few feet beyond the door to the right, but extended some thirty feet to the left, ending in a corner that branched off again to the left and presumably led deeper into the ship.

"We should keep moving," Fulton said, turning back to face Isaac, who was crouched over close to the corpse of the creature that attacked them. "Hey, did you hear me?"

Isaac continued looking over the creature for a moment longer, then looked up and nodded. "Yeah, I heard you. Come take a look at this."

Fulton spared another glance down the corridor, then stepped back over the creature to stand beside the kneeling figure of his companion. Isaac waved him down closer, and with a sigh, Fulton complied.

"Okay, what are we looking at?," he said as he settled into a crouch beside Isaac.

"This," Isaac said, reaching out to the creatures chest and yanking something off of it. He handed the object to Fulton and waited. Fulton looked at the piece of fabric he had been handed uncomprehendingly for a moment, then turned it over. There was writing on it.

"J. McArthur?," Fulton said aloud. After a moment, he turned to look at Isaac. "J. McArthur? Christ, was this thing a crew member!?"

"I don't know," Isaac said. "But we have to find some way of getting back to the others, then we've gotta get the Trireme on the horn and try to get a patrol cruiser out here or something."

"Right, assuming the others are still alive," Fulton said, then stood up and rolled his shoulders, trying to work out some of the rapidly building tension there.

"Yeah," Isaac said, "assuming they are."

The two men fell silent after that, sparing a glance at each other's reflective faceplates. Almost in perfect unison, they turned and stalked cautiously down the corridor. The next few minutes were thankfully uneventful, and they made swift progress through the bowels of the enormous ship.

"Hey," Isaac said. "Check it out."

Fulton glanced at the small glowing sign that read "MONORAIL CONTROL BOOTH", then looked at Isaac.

"Assuming everyone else made it, I guess the first place they'd head would be the monorail station. We can use the monorail to get pretty much anywhere in the ship, but the Bridge is the most likely place we would find anyone," Isaac explained, then hurried his progress with Fulton picking up the pace to keep up.

"So, what do you think the Ishimura is doing out here?," Fulton asked.

"What do you mean? It's a mining ship, my guess is it was mining," Isaac replied.

"Maybe, but you do realise we're about a quarter of a light-year beyond the Rim?," Fulton said. "It's forbidden for non-military ships to travel this far out."

"True," Isaac said, waving his hand through the hologram in front of the door to the Monorail Control Booth. "I didn't think we were that far out, maybe they got lost or heard about a big score and thought they could get away with a fortune without anyone knowing where it came from."

The two men swept the room with their weapons carefully, no eager for surprises at this point, then Isaac moved over to the controls.

"Looks like you were right," Fulton said, peering at the controls from over Isaac's shoulder. "Monorails last stop was the bridge, eight minutes ago."

"Yeah, and it's still there."

"Well, call it back then let's get out onto the platform, see if we can meet up with the others soon," Fulton said, looking over his shoulder as a distant screeching caught his attention. "This place gives me the creeps."

"Yeah," Isaac murmured, as he recalled the monorail to the station.

"Who the hell designed this rust-bucket? There isn't direct access from here to the platform," Fulton said, looking at a map mounted on the wall opposite the glass view port. "Looks like we have to go through this doorway and circle around."

"I don't like the sound of that, it'd be pretty easy to get ourselves lost from the look of all these corridors, side passages and maintenance tunnels," Isaac said, stepping up beside his companion to examine the map himself. "But it looks like it's either that or we go back the way we came."

Isaac looked to Fulton, noticing for the first time a combat knife strapped to his shoulder pauldron with the words "Mister Stabby" scrawled across its sheathe in what looked like chalk.

"Fuck that," Fulton said, turning around and shouldering his assault rifle, he flicked off the safety and fired a burst into the view port. The thick glass erupted into a spider web of cracks immediately.

"Jesus Christ, some warning next time would be nice," Isaac seethed, having jumped in fright at the sound of the weapon firing. Fulton patted him on the shoulder as he walked toward the view port, grabbing an office chair along the way and hurling it through the glass.

"Option C? Looks like we've got direct access to the platform now," the Marine said with a chuckle, before leaping through the shattered view port and landing nimbly on his feet on the monorail platform. "You coming or what?"

"Yeah, yeah. Wait up," Isaac said, muttering a curse to himself as clambered out onto the platform with considerably less grace than his companion just as the monorail turned up.

The two men entered the monorail quickly, sweeping the interior and finding two dead creatures and a few dozen spent casings from an assortment of weapons.

"Let's get this show on the road," Isaac said as he brought up the monorail travel interface and selected the bridge.

_____________________________________________________________________

So, what will our protagonists find when they reach the bridge? Where will they go from there? How many other team members survived? Find out in the next instalment! (Which definitely won't take as long as this one did to arrive)


End file.
